Powers/Abilities: Duane Freeman did not possess any
superpowers, but he was a capable administrator and a helpful, loyal
liaison to the Avengers. Furthermore, Duane was an avid and unashamed fan
of superheroes, following their exploits like others would follow
sportsteams. The Avengers were a particular favorite of his, as the many
autographs, scrapbooks, toys, comics and other memorabilia he had
collected over the years proved. According to the Wasp, he also had the
cutest dimples.

History:

(Avengers III#4 -BTS) - After the Avengers reassembled in the wake of the
"Heroes Reborn" event, federal agent Duane Freeman was assigned to work with
the team as their new security liaison, replacing Raymond Sikorski who had
fulfilled that position prior to their disappearance at the end of the
Onslaught crisis. At some undisclosed point, Freeman also joined the
Triune Understanding, a philosophical movement that preached the
harnessing of a person's own triple strength.

(Avengers III#4) - Duane joined the founding members of the Avengers at
Avengers Mansion during their deliberations on the new lineup. He
immediately managed to surprise everyone by stating he didn't have any
requirements for reinstating the team's security clearances, which had
always been a hot button issue to his predecessors Sikorski and Henry
Peter Gyrich. He ensured the Avengers that he was just here to make their
job easier by keeping the proverbial red tape to a bare minimum. His open,
eager attitude made Iron Man wonder repeatedly if Duane really was from
the government. With Duane's help, the founders managed to narrow down the
new line up, but he surprised Iron Man and the others again when he
wondered if it was okay to ask the Avengers that didn't make the cut for
their autographs before they left. After the Avengers' starting lineup had
been formalised, he introduced the team of Captain America, Iron Man,
Scarlet Witch, Thor, Vision and Warbird to the media gathered outside
Avengers Mansion.

(Avengers III#5) - Duane called an Avengers emergency meeting from his
office in Washington D.C. Adressing the team via video, he told them an
airplane carrying a team of Project: PEGASUS researchers had crashed in
the Atlantic off the coast of Maine. Because the scientists were assigned
to research a sunken alien vessel that had at one time been part of
Thanos' invasion fleet, the government suspected foul play. Duane asked
the Avengers to help rescue the passengers of the airplane and to be
present, just in case who or whatever caused the craft to crash was still
out there. Captain America overruled Hawkeye's protests and ordered the
team to move out.

(Iron Man III#15 (fb)) - After fighting Ronan the Accuser
on the Moon alongside the Fantastic Four, Iron Man managed to use the
Kree power core the Accuser was after to supply power to the
SHIELD's Project Starcore lunar base. Iron Man then contacted Duane Freeman to give
him a status update and to complain about the fact SHIELD had denied the
Fantastic Four access to key databases. Freeman couldn't tell him why
SHIELD was uncooperative, but promised to find out.

(Avengers III#14) - After the mysterious, powerful entity
called Pagan
attacked the Avengers in New York, Duane informed Captain America that
Pagan had also appeared in Branson, Missouri and San Francisco where he
damaged the Golden Gate bridge. Freeman explained to Cap that the
villain's motivations behind these seemingly random attacks remained a
mystery, as Captain America promised to make Pagan a top priority.

(X-51#4) - Duane Freeman called in to Avengers
Mansion and found Edwin Jarvis was on monitor duty. Duane informed the
butler that because Avengers reservist Machine Man had turned against the
government, his special Avengers priviliges should be revoked immediately.
Freeman also charged the team to bring their wayward member in. Only
Firestar and Justice were present at that time, so they went and faced
X-51 in downtown New York, later joined by the Vision.

(X-51#5) - While enjoying an anything but spectacular cup of coffee in
his Washington office, Duane received a vid call from Avengers Mansion. A
startled Edwin Jarvis told Duane that their worst fears regarding X-51's
situation had been realized. Before he could ask any questions, the screen
went blank. Figuring that it would take a lot to get Jarvis riled up,
Duane immediately called Henry Peter Gyrich and the Commission on
Superhuman Activities to tell them about the problem in New York.

(Avengers III#24) - Hoping to help the Avengers deal with the growing
public unrest about their supposed lack of minorities, Duane tried to aid
the team by figuring out the best way to deal with these allegations.
Their PR-damage control discussions were interrupted by visiting Avenger
Quicksilver who ran in, accusing the Triune Understanding of being
secretly responsible for the bad press the team had been getting. Shocked,
Duane revealed himself as a Triune member and was outraged by the
allegation. The Avengers seemed equally surprised, but before they could
get deeper into the matter, the Exemplars
and their flying island base appeared over New York, in search for their
wayward member Juggernaut. Duane and Jarvis watched the team move out to
confront the Exemplars.

(Avengers III#25) - As the Avengers prepared for their final battle
against the Exemplars, Duane provided Captain America with all the
background information the US government had available on them. Still
uncomfortable with Duane's newly revealed status as a Triune member, Cap
gave him the cold shoulder. Duane picked up on this and confronted Cap,
but he assured Freeman that he truly didn't hold his allegiance with the
Understanding against him. Still, when Duane suggested that the Exemplars
conflict might be easily avoided by giving them the Juggernaut, Cap
snapped. Comparing surrendering the Juggernaut to Britain standing by as
Hitler took Poland, he coldly informed Duane that the Avengers would
defend the Juggernaut. Even if that meant their government clearances
would be yanked as a result. Duane took the verbal abuse in stride, but
Cap immediately felt guilty, realizing the reason he overreacted was
Duane's ties to the Triune Understanding.

(Avengers III#27) - Duane assembled the
active Avengers at mansion to discuss the many public relations
nightmares that had been plaguing them recently. From protesters picketing
the mansion, demanding either more minority members or no more mutants, to
Thor hurling his hammer through a TV camera, not to mention Captain
America deciding to resign from active duty so a more media savvy leader
could guide the team. Cap wasn't the only Avenger leaving, though: Wonder
Man, Firestar and Justice announced they'd be going as well. Duane openly
mused about the opportunities these departures created:"Not
bad, not bad at all... Fewer mutants, but we've still got one, which
defuses the anti-mutants crowd without relaxing our stance on mutant
rights. And now we've got a chance to add a black member or...".
A furious Iron Man overheard and confronted Duane, who apologetically
explained that recruiting a person of color would simply help appease the
public protests. Furthermore, he offered the notion that the Avengers
might unconsciously have been selecting white members. In order to create
an equal playing field, Duane suggested the Avengers asked past members to
rejoin, starting with their black or latino members. When this
recruitment drive didn't yield any results, Duane inadvertently caused
Thor to resign when he demanded the thundergod apologised publicly for
assaulting that camera crew. Infuriated at the very notion, the god of
thunder stormed out of the mansion, and in earshot of the press,
blamed Freeman for having shattered the Avengers. Undisturbed and
professional as ever, Duane proceeded to reinstate disgraced Avenger
Warbird upon Iron Man's request, even as he'd already okayed the Wasp and
Goliath for active duty. The membership drive was interruped by the
arrival of the Triune Understanding's leader Jonathan Tremont. He had come
to the mansion to make peace with the Avengers. However, with everyone
distracted by Tremont's arrival, a group of anti-mutant terrorists decided
to assault the mansion to get their point across. When the Triune's
personal super hero Triathlon stepped in and defeated them, Duane asked
Triathlon if he wanted to join the team. Freeman then vehemently defended
Triathlon's application, even threatening to shut down the Avengers if
they dared to deny a member based on ethnicity or religious beliefs. The
team grudgingly accepted Thriatlon, in response Freeman went along with the
Wasp's suggestion of allowing She-Hulk to serve as a reserve member for
the Vision who was still AWOL at the time. As he watched the new Avengers
lineup of Iron Man, Wasp, Goliath, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel
and Triathlon go out to present themselves, Duane felt bad about his role
in the decision making process.

(Avengers III#31 - BTS) - Shortly after his "coming out" as a Triune
member, Duane discreetly started to investigate the Triune Understanding.
He wondered how the Understanding could have gotten hold of the Avengers'
classified priority communication frequencies and made some subtle
inquiries to find out if the rumors about illegal Triune activities were
true.

(Avengers III#31) - Duane watched Iron Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch put
Hank Pym through a battery of medical tests to determine the cause of his
seizures during a recent mission against Kulan
Gath in Costa Verde. When the tests proved inconclusive, Duane
agreed with Pym that it was probably just a temporary weakness, possibly a
virus or an aftereffect of Gath's magics. In response, Iron Man
snipped at him that ignoring possible problems wasn't the best advice a
security liaison could give. Later, Duane was present when the Vision
called in to summon the Avengers to Chicago, where a meeting between the
European and American Maggia leaders was about to take place. Duane saw
the team off and mentioned in passing that, while tackling organised crime
might not be a typical task for the Avengers, it would be great for their
public image. Iron Man coldly agreed as the Wasp promised to call from
Chicago. Watching them go, Duane wondered to himself when and if he would
ever fit in now that his status as a Triune member was revealed.

(Thunderbolts I#44) - Duane joined the Avengers, the Thunderbolts and
Madame Masque in their briefing on the whereabouts and plans of Count
Nefaria and his ionically controlled underlings Atlas and Wonder
Man.

(Maximum Security#1) - After the Shi'ar turned Earth into a penal colony
for alien supercriminals, Duane visited Avengers Mansion to give the team
an update about the various extraterrestrial threats. He patched the
mansion's comsystem into the Commission On Superhuman Activities'
datafeed, the initial images showing footage of Daredevil, the New
Warriors and the Winter Guard engaged in fights with alien criminals including Devos the Devastator, Spragg the Living Hill, Insidio, Nygorn, Skar & Threkker.

(Avengers III#35) - Duane, Valerie Cooper and Henry Peter Gyrich,
accompanied the USAgent when he visited Avengers Mansion to inform the
team that they, along with every other superhero on the planet, had been
commandeered to join together in a final confrontation against the alien
aggressors.

(Avengers III#38) - After the Avengers had switched to a more pro-active,
global style of superheroing, Duane gave them their first international
mission when the inhabitants of the small Grecian town of Kalkhimithia
were turned into Hulks by the mad alchemist Diablo.

(Avengers Annual 2001/2 - BTS) - With the files of the Commission On
Superhuman Activities in slight disarray, Duane emailed Edwin Jarvis a
series of questions to straighten these matters out. For instance, Duane
wanted to know why the triple homicide charges against Iron Man were
dropped, what happened to the teenage Tony Stark and the Wasp's mutated
insectoid form following Onslaught. He also inquired about the composition
of Captain America's shield and wondered whether or not the Falcon was a
mutant. Jarvis dutifully set the record straight.

(Avengers III#49 - BTS) - Duane was among the many casualties caused by
Kang the Conqueror when he assaulted and decimated Washington D.C.

(Avengers III#55 (fb) - BTS) - After his brother's death, Derek Freeman
discovered the preliminary results of Duane's investigation into the
Triune Understanding's shady dealings. Duane had uncovered that Triune
leader Jonathan Tremont was able to read the minds of his followers,
which may have been how the Triunes got the Avengers' classified
frequencies. Not wanting to be a security risk, Duane started a formal
letter of resignation but, obviously, died before sending it.

(Avengers III#55 - BTS) - In the wake of the war against Kang and his
forces, Duane was revealed to have perished in Washington D.C. during the
Conqueror's final assault on the city.

(Avengers III#55) - Duane's brother Derek visited the
mansion to collect Duane's personal belongings. Iron Man met with Derek,
who told the Avenger about his brother's passion for superheroes, his love
for the Avengers and how happy it made him to work for the team. Iron Man
confessed to Derek that he felt uneasy about working with Duane after it
became clear he was a member of the Triune Understanding. Derek then
revealed
what he had learned about Duane and his investigation into the Triunes.
Iron Man felt guilty about the way he had treated Duane, saying he really
should have told the liaison how he liked and respected him. Derek assured
him not to worry about that: his brother was the smart one in the family
and always knew the score. Several days later, Iron Man, Wasp and Captain
America visited the memorial for Kang's victims in Washington D.C and paid
tribute to Duane, whose picture was put up there, among the other fallen.

Comments: Created by Kurt Busiek, George Pérez, Al
Vey.

I always found Duane to be a welcome breath of fresh air:
finally someone from the government who recognized the good the Avengers
do and was actually interested in helping them do their jobs. His outing
as a Triune member in Avengers III#27 was also a wonderful moment that
had been foreshadowed for over two years: ever since his first
appearance Duane could be seen wearing the Understanding's logo on
either his tie or lapel. Talk about planning ahead!

When asked about his decision to kill Duane (off panel no
less) in the closing arc of his Avengers run, writer and creator Kurt
Busiek had the following to say: "It made it more of a
human moment to learn that among the many, many dead in Kang's assault
on Washington DC, there was someone we knew, rather than having it all
be faceless, dismissable deaths. Duane's story wasn't an ongoing
adventure -- he'd shown himself to be a supportive liaison who liked the
Avengers. The disagreement over the Triune Understanding had largely
been resolved; he wasn't a spy for them or anything, merely a believer
in their philosophy. So there wasn't some storyline we were
interrupting. Had he died on-panel, I don't think it'd have made for a
better story. The memorial story brought home the human cost of the
attack better than a two-panel sequence showing him dying, and thus
meaning it didn't come as a shock later."

Just how he died wasn't revealed either. He might have
been killed during the initial assault by the Sentinel fleet Kang had
commandeered. Maybe he perished when Kang's orbital base Damocles fired
at the Master's defense walls. He could have been hit by the giant
holographic Kang's numerous energy blasts or have been instantly reduced
to a skeleton by the giant, flesh dissolving explosive device the
Conqueror dropped.